


Basement Purgatory

by orphan_account



Category: Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As an experiment, Cyrus turns the Juggernaut and the Jackal loose in his basement. However, instead of fighting, the two spirits have a conversation... of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Basement Purgatory

"Cyrus? Are you sure this is a good idea?" Kalina peered at the video monitor curiously in spite of herself. "I mean, what if they. . . hurt each other?"

Cyrus Kriticos laughed in the way that always annoyed her a little- the "you silly little girl laugh" she called it. "Kalina, dear, they're already dead. What harm could they possibly do to each other?"

Kalina frowned and tapped a fingernail against the monitor, which displayed a view of the basement in Kriticos's fantastic mansion. "Okay, then, it's your loss if something happens to them. After what you went through to get the last one- _and_ considering that you're supposed to be dead yourself- I'd think you wouldn't want to risk it. It'll be pretty hard to replace two of them with no help."

"Nothing will happen," Cyrus said through his teeth in a tone that meant he was getting irritated with her. "This is my last chance to experiment before I obtain the thirteenth. It would be a shame to end it all without ever knowing how the souls might interact with one another."

Kalina sat back in her chair and folded her arms. "Fine. As long as you're sure they can't get out of the basement."

Cyrus sighed in irritation. "Of course they can't." He glanced at the monitor one last time, then began manipulating the controls that operated the large inscribed glass plates which held the imprisoned souls captive.

"Which two are you going to release?" Kalina asked, trying to diffuse Cyrus's exasperation.

"Well, our latest guest seems to be rather antsy. I think he'd enjoy a little more breathing room. . . so to speak."

Kalina's eyes widened at Cyrus' intention to release Horace Mahoney, a.k.a. the Breaker, more recently a.k.a. the Juggernaut. After all the trouble it took to catch him. . . . "And the other one?"

"That, my dear, is up to you." Cyrus dropped the Arcanum in her lap. "Take your pick."

Although she was generally against the idea of allowing two of the spirits to interact with one another, the sense of power Kalina got from being allowed to choose one of the. . . variables in the experiment drove her to open the book. That's how it was with Cyrus. She would be _this_ close to calling it quits with him, when he would give her just enough rein to make her want to stay.

Kalina slowly flipped through the pages, considering each of the signs of the Black Zodiac. She didn't want to expose any of the females, dead or not, to the Juggernaut given his former pattern of killing female hitchhikers. The First Born Son was just a kid (though an incredibly bratty one), and there would be no way to get the Great Child out there without his mother. That left. . . . The Torso. The Hammer. The Torn Prince- hmm, that one might be interesting. Royce _did_ die in a car wreck after all; he might have quite a reaction to a junkyard mechanic.

Then Kalina reached the Jackal. Of all the spirits, he was the one she most hated, mostly because he, like the Juggernaut, had killed only women- but also because he was a copycat. A wannabe Jack the Ripper who couldn't even come up with a unique M.O. The others, now they were different- circus freak mother and child, blacksmith killed by his own hammer. . . even Cyrus' own niece-in-law was more original than the Jackal.

"Him." Kalina pointed to the Jackal's page, fingertip pressed against his symbol. "The Juggernaut and the Jackal."

"The Jackal? Interesting choice." Cyrus looked thoughtfully at the Arcanum, then snapped it shut. "The Jackal it is."

* * *

Horace "Breaker" Mahoney started as the glass panel that served as the door to his cell began to shift. Instantly he moved out of the tiny room that imprisoned him, squeezing his seven-foot frame through before the door even had a chance to fully open. Horace moved across the floor in quick strides to reach the base of the stairs- but the panel blocking them was closed. The frustrated ghost howled and threw himself against the glass, then was jolted back with a feeling of electric shock by the words etched there.

What kind of cruel joke was this, to let him out of the cell, give him hope, only to leave him trapped once more in a slightly larger cage? Horace turned angrily to face the other cells. Eleven faces in various states of pain and disfigurement- the Torso's peering out from under his arm- looked back. They were nameless faces, known only to him by the other signs of the Black Zodiac. He supposed they had real names, as he did, but he had never had the chance to learn them.

Horace howled again and leapt at the nearest cell, banging his fist against the glass and this time hardly feeling the shock it gave him. The cell's occupant, the Withered Lover, drew back with a mixed look of fear and pity on her burned face. Horace snarled at her through the glass. He hated her. He hated all of them, who despite their own freakishness still looked at him that way, pitying in her case and that of the Pilgrimess, the Dire Mother, the Hammer. Mocking disgust on the faces of the once-pretty young ones: the Torn Prince, the Angry Princess, the Bound Woman. (He hated them even more than the rest- how dare they pretend to anguish now when they had at least had beauty at one time? Not like him, who had never been anything but a freak.) The First-Born Son and the Great Child- both children in mind if not in body- stared openly. The Torso, at least, rarely lifted his head to gawk.

The Juggernaut paced the length of the basement, glaring at each of the other faces until they looked away, even the children. But when he drew even with the Jackal's cell, the spirit inside glared back. Horace growled and banged his fist on the panel that separated him from the other ghost, hoping to make the Jackal draw back as the others had. But no, instead he darted forward and clawed at the glass himself. Each word of the containment spell etched on the door glowed. Horace's head turned jerkily as his eyes traced the random pattern of sparks of shining Latin, words he, with his middle-school education, did not recognize, hardly even knew to be words. To him they were nothing but locks, somehow keeping him on the other side of thin glass he could otherwise have smashed with no difficulty.

The Jackal's long fingernails skittered across the glass and came to rest opposite Horace's own fingertips. The Jackal drew back his thin, mangled lips and snarled, though he had to look up to meet Horace's malignant gaze. Horace glared down into the dark-lined, mismatched eyes a full foot below his own, lit by the glow of the word etched between their hands.

Then the glass panel shifted.

Horace stepped backward, staring as the glass slid away, leaving nothing between himself and the Jackal. What was going on? Were they all going to be released into the narrow hall of the basement? Why?

The Jackal moved forward out of his cell, looking from side to side as he passed its doorway as if expecting to be shocked back even without the glass. But like Horace, he was able to enter the main part of the basement. The Jackal stalked slowly along the basement corridor, a contrast to his usual jerky, dancing movement. He did not look at the imprisoned spirits who were watching the proceedings with much interest, likely wondering if they too would be released. Instead he looked only at Horace.

* * *

"What's he doing?" Kalina leaned forward towards the Jackal's image on the monitor.

"Stalking," was the succinct response. "How do you think he killed so many whores without being caught? He turned _himself_ in, remember- no one ever would have caught him otherwise."

Kalina's disgust at the admiration in Cyrus' voice was overshadowed by her own thoughts: _So that's why he's the Jackal. I always thought Hyena was more appropriate._

The freakishly tall figure of the Breaker, the Juggernaut, took one long stride backwards, then another as the Jackal approached him.

"He's _scared_ of him," Kalina breathed.

"No," Cyrus corrected her, "wary. Not scared. The Breaker was never scared of anything in his life- or afterwards."

* * *

In that, Cyrus was wrong. Horace wasn't scared now, of course- the long-haired, almost petite man before him registered as no real threat in whatever ectoplasmic mass served as Horace's brain. But there had been fear enough in his time among the living, starting with his frenzied baby's cries when his mother left him in one of the junked cars, moving through the constant terror of abandonment that plagued him and was realized once more when his father finally died, ending with fear of his own death when each bullet in a whole clip pierced his flesh. (Then fear changed to indignity when the newly freed spirit found himself unable to Ascend and had to watch its former home be pierced anew with another clip. Somehow, those bullet holes appeared on the spirit's form as well, though he had vacated the body before the cops shot it up a second time.)

But no, he wasn't scared now, only confused. The Jackal moved, stalked towards him doggedly, one brown and one blue eye turned up to Horace's bullet-ridden face and the long-nailed, almost clawed hands plucking absently at the leather straps still hanging from his straitjacket. Absurdly, the thought most prominent in Horace's mind was that the head-cage the Jackal wore must be painfully heavy.

Horace was forced to stop his slow backward trudge when he came up against the glass of the Torn Prince's cell at the end of the narrow basement. He jumped back before the inscribed words could shock him but did not glance over his shoulder to see how the Prince reacted.

The Jackal kept advancing until he was within a foot of Horace then stopped and hissed up at him. Horace was still unsure what the Jackal was doing, but he didn't like being hissed at. Snarling in return, he reached out with his large hands and gave the Jackal's shoulders a hard shove. It was the first time he had touched another spirit, and to him the Jackal felt like any living human: solid beneath the rough clothing he wore. Yet the Jackal drew back as if he had been scorched, shrieking and clawing at Horace's arms.

* * *

"Yes. . . that's it," Cyrus murmured. Kalina glanced at him, but he was not speaking to her. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the monitor.

_He **wants** them to fight,_ she realized. And there was more to it than that- from the look on Cyrus' face, the glare he was giving the taller of the two figures, he wanted the Jackal to win.

* * *

Horace grasped the Jackal's wrists in his hands to stop the flailing, claw-like nails. The long-haired spirit's bones felt delicate, as if they must be hollow like those of the dead birds Horace used to find in the junkyard and dissect. If the Jackal had been a living man, vulnerable to more than the glowing containment spells on his cell, Horace could have easily crushed his wrists.

The Jackal screeched again and tried to pull away. The look on his face was hard to decipher for someone with Horace's poor social skills- something like anger and fear and hate all mixed together. Another man might have called it primal, but that was one of the many words Horace didn't know. But whatever the expression meant, Horace didn't like it. He hadn't minded when the girls, the hitchhikers, had looked at him with fear or even hatred before he killed them. It was the anger, then, that bothered him now- or the fact that the mangled face glowering up at him was no girl's.

"Don't. . . ." It was the first time Horace had spoken since he had been captured, and perhaps the tenth since his death. It was difficult for him to find, then to form the words to speak to the other spirit. "Don't be. . . scared. I won't hurt you."

The Jackal stared at him, then his snarl split into a fanged grin. "I'm not scared of you," he hissed. "Just. . . don't. . . touch me."

Horace looked down at the slender wrists in his hands, not really understanding. Oh, he got the Jackal's revulsion to his touch all right- Horace's own father had avoided physical contact with him as much as possible. But there _had_ been fear on the Jackal's face, Horace was sure of it.

"Let. _Go_." The Jackal tugged again at his wrists, and this time Horace dropped them. It wasn't worth trying to figure out; in the end, dead or not, the Jackal was just like the others- the other humans when he was alive, the other spirits now. He was disgusted by Horace just like they all were.

* * *

"It looks like. . . they're talking!"

"Don't be stupid," Cyrus retorted. "They don't talk."

"They _can_ though," Kalina persisted. "Jean does."

"Jean?" Cyrus asked absently.

"Jean Kriticos," Kalina said acidly. "Your niece?"

"Oh- the Withered Lover. She doesn't talk; she keens," Cyrus went on in disgust. "Crying for her children and my nephew. I doubt that any of them can communicate beyond that repetitious whining."

"I still think you should have set up an audio feed-"

"Kalina, please. Give it a rest." Cyrus glanced at his watch. "Anyhow, they've had long enough if all they're going to do is jaw at each other. Go rein them in."

It took Kalina a minute to register what he had said. ". . . what? _Me_?"

"Yes. We can't leave them loose in the basement. Get them back in their cells."

"But- why can't _you_ do it?"

Cyrus turned to her in irritation. "You said you'd be a better assistant than that fool Rafkin- so, assist!"

Kalina gave him a furious, incredulous look, but Cyrus only handed her one of the walkie-talkies he used to communicate with his assistants when they were in different parts of the house. Fuming, Kalina snatched it up along with her flares and shoved a pair of glasses on before storming towards the basement.

* * *

The Jackal threw his caged head back and looked around, his mismatched eyes narrowing. "Someone's coming. The woman."

"How do you know?" Horace asked sullenly.

The Jackal grinned unnervingly. "I hear her. Footsteps, lighter than his."

"Will she let us out?"

The other spirit snorted with laughter. "You're madder than I am."

"What?"

"Of course she won't let us out." The Jackal seemed to be getting impatient with him.

"Then why-"

"They watch us. They opened our cells to see what we'd do to each other."

There were several more things Horace wanted to ask, like how the living ones could watch them without being there, or what they thought the two spirits might do. At the moment, though, he was more concerned with how they might escape.

"If the woman comes in here, maybe we could kill her and get out-"

"No. They'll be more careful than that. Don't worry, we'll get our chance to escape eventually." The Jackal glanced up at Horace with another grin. "They've got to be keeping us here for _something_. When they let us out to do it. . . all twelve of us. . . then we can take them."

Horace didn't like the idea of working together with the other spirits. He didn't trust them, not the way they looked at him- and he certainly didn't trust the Jackal. And yet, for some reason, he wanted the other spirit's approval, the way he had wanted his father's. He wanted the Jackal to let him touch him.

* * *

Both spirits looked at the stairs when they heard the basement door open. Kalina's feet came into their view, followed by the rest of her as she descended. Through the special glasses she wore, Kalina could see the two spirits standing before her, just _watching_ her, as if they were waiting to see what she would do. She held up one of the flares threateningly.

"Go on! Back in your cells!" she said, sounding stupid even to her own ears. Next thing you know, she'd be saying, "Don't make me come in there!" It was probably good after all that Cyrus didn't have an audio feed in the basement.

The Juggernaut looked down at the Jackal, as if waiting for instructions. The Jackal kept his strange eyes fixed on Kalina a moment, lips parted to reveal his fang-like teeth. Then he glanced up at the Juggernaut and made an almost imperceptible motion with his hand, as if he were gesturing the much larger spirit back to his cell. The Juggernaut seemed torn between obeying and making a rush on the door, but finally he turned and trudged back to his cell. Kalina watched in amazement as the Jackal returned to his cell as well and crouched there, grinning at her as if to say, "Bet you weren't expecting _this_."

She didn't like it, didn't like the way the Juggernaut, who had never looked to anyone else for authority, and the Jackal, who seemed to hate everyone whether living or dead, appeared to have been talking. If they were conspiring, plotting something. . . . For an instant, Kalina entertained the thought of telling Cyrus, but what good would it do? He wouldn't listen to her anyway. And besides, so what if the spirits were up to something? It would be Cyrus's problem, not hers.

She depressed the button of the walkie-talkie. "Cyrus?"

"Yes?"

"They're in. Close the doors."

* * *

Horace felt an overwhelming sense of despair as the glass door to his cell slid closed. How did the Jackal know they would have another chance? Horace might _never_ get out of this glass-enclosed hell. Maybe he shouldn't have listened to the Jackal. After all, what had trusting people ever gotten him? Nothing, that's what.

Nevertheless, he sought the Jackal's cell with his eyes. The other spirit was still crouching on the floor, watching the living woman as she left the basement. Then the caged head turned and the Jackal's eyes met Horace's.

The Jackal grinned at the Juggernaut and winked- and Horace wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

* * *

The End


End file.
